Scholarly Critique 1: Affinity Spaces and Game-Based Learning

I’m writing this blog to critique the article “Nurturing Affinity

& Game- Based Learning” by James Paul Gee and Elisabeth Hayes (2008). This article is about the concept of online engagements with the game known as affinity spaces, can create learning.

The authors states that “engagement with a game and learning are enhanced by building social engagement with a game, in communities organized around an interest in the game (p. 19). They believe that the engagement portion is what substantially effects one’s ability to problem-solve, and in problem-solving learning will occur. From the context of the article, I would argue they call this process “socio-technical engineering”.

The authors highly suggest that if you join an affinity space you will join a “community of practice” that will increase your understanding and learning of the game itself. I think, however, the authors are failing to take into account several factors. As someone that does not enjoy surfing the Internet, but does enjoy learning I would never even assume to look for an “affinity space.” Additionally since most forums are open and unregulated how does one join a forum find the right information or content, how does learning occur by spending hours shuffling through nonsense or irrelevant information.

The authors conceptualize learning as two-fold: social engagement and problem-solving. I believe that learning does occur from problem-solving, if you’re a tactical learner, but what if you’re an auditory learner, how would an affinity space promote learning. If you’re a visual learner, you would probably never get online to find information because you would just learn from what you see and experience.

I enjoyed how the authors compared the affinity space experience to experience one would get in school and I think they made some valid points. For instance, learning is not expected to be individually proactive, as one would find in a gaming experience. If anything it’s individually reactive, meaning the student is always reacting to what is told or taught by the teacher. I also liked the authors comment that in schools, student’s work is evaluated in a vacuum, and student’s are never told or expected to share their work with the larger community, in other words their work will have no impact outside the grade achieved and the teachers review. Whereas in the gaming experience, or atleast in an affinity space, you know that your work will be reviewed, assessed, and used by a wider audience.

However, the authors dismissed the school system on several principle for which I did not agree such as downplaying the effectiveness of hierarchical learning. I believe that students need a starting point and an end point. Imagine if you were trying to teach Algebra to a student that never even learned multiplications. Some knowledge needs to have a start and end in a certain order to effectively progress. The authors give the example of the one of the Masters of Little Big Planet, was a woman that failed geometry in school but now has mastered geometry to learn how to effective play the game. However, we know that learning occurs by building upon itself, I believe the Master student could have only learned to actually master geometry by first being introduced to geometry in the first place. Whether she failed geometry or not she needed to be familiar with the concepts first, to actually learn them later.

The authors assume that through play one can learn “transferable” skills, such as “system-thinking,” but I would argue that not all games are created equal. For instance I learned several things from Mario’s World, but I would readily argue if any of these skills were actually transferable to anything outside that game or gaming systems.

My question for the authors would be what school system have they noted that followed more of their philosophy and have been successful? Additionally I would like to see more definitions and explanations, such as how does one find an affinity space (what terms are used), and what types of games lends itself to affinity spaces versus others?

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